Hello!
I come here with a proposal given the headaches presented by round robin finals in the current unofficial SM Cup (part of the ROA circuit), which can be found here.
As you can see, the 3 finalists are on their 4th run of finals, which was posted on April 18th. This stage of the tournament has not been resolved in well over a month, and while this isn't a failure of the hosts or players, it's a failure in how we currently make our brackets. Smogon Tour uses this system, and while it is far from perfect, the live tournament format supports a bracket reset way better than one where players have to carve out time again and again to play long, often Bo3 sets. This issue has come up in the past in the 3rd DPP Cup, featuring 3 rounds of finals. Unofficials are one thing, but the issue taking place in SM Cup is something that could happen to two onging cups in RBY and GSC, as we're headed for 3 finalists in each of those. Imagine having to delay Classic or Slam playoffs by weeks at a time because of bracket reset issues like this, it's frankly ridiculous and giving more byes in the initial rounds should be a non-issue in comparison to the headaches infinite resets can cause.
This topic was also covered in another thread found here in relation to double-elim tournaments, but I think this should absolutely be extended into single elimination tournaments as well. The burden on players is ridiculous and in the case of the SM Cup above, the players themselves barely want to finish themselves but have to out of fear for an infraction.
And to be clear since somebody will bring it up, I don't believe Smogon Tour needs to implement this change and round robin finals in that rarely cause as many issues as we've seen in non-live tournaments.
I'll also tag the current finalists in SM Cup to offer any thoughts they might have Aurella umbreon098 beatiful
I come here with a proposal given the headaches presented by round robin finals in the current unofficial SM Cup (part of the ROA circuit), which can be found here.
As you can see, the 3 finalists are on their 4th run of finals, which was posted on April 18th. This stage of the tournament has not been resolved in well over a month, and while this isn't a failure of the hosts or players, it's a failure in how we currently make our brackets. Smogon Tour uses this system, and while it is far from perfect, the live tournament format supports a bracket reset way better than one where players have to carve out time again and again to play long, often Bo3 sets. This issue has come up in the past in the 3rd DPP Cup, featuring 3 rounds of finals. Unofficials are one thing, but the issue taking place in SM Cup is something that could happen to two onging cups in RBY and GSC, as we're headed for 3 finalists in each of those. Imagine having to delay Classic or Slam playoffs by weeks at a time because of bracket reset issues like this, it's frankly ridiculous and giving more byes in the initial rounds should be a non-issue in comparison to the headaches infinite resets can cause.
This topic was also covered in another thread found here in relation to double-elim tournaments, but I think this should absolutely be extended into single elimination tournaments as well. The burden on players is ridiculous and in the case of the SM Cup above, the players themselves barely want to finish themselves but have to out of fear for an infraction.
And to be clear since somebody will bring it up, I don't believe Smogon Tour needs to implement this change and round robin finals in that rarely cause as many issues as we've seen in non-live tournaments.
I'll also tag the current finalists in SM Cup to offer any thoughts they might have Aurella umbreon098 beatiful